What if Jesus Really is the Son of God?

The Rev.Paddy Cavanaugh, Feast of the Transfiguration, 8/6/23

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35 (Moses on Mt. Sinai), 2 Peter 1:13-21 (We do not follow cleverly devised myths), Luke 9:28-36 (The Transfiguration)

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.

I’m still getting used to the range of responses one gets while wearing a clerical collar in public. The other day while meeting a parishioner at a coffee shop I met a young woman working behind the cash register. As I gave her my order, I could tell that she was eyeballing me with the semi-perplexed look which I have come to recognize as the precursor to a question or exclamation about my clerical status. I simply smiled back and handed her my credit card, and after she returned it she beamed back at me and said: “that’s a really cool uniform; which restaurant do you work at?”

I really had no idea how to respond so I mumbled something about my attire being what clergy – typically priests – wear to identify themselves as a resource to the community; a strategy which had clearly failed in this instance. I didn’t even bother trying to explain what a deacon was because could tell it would not have added clarity to the situation.

Nonetheless, the cashier then flashed me a look of excited understanding and said: “Oh a priest! Like in a church right?” And I, not wanting to hold the line up any further, simply returned her excited smile and said “that’s exactly right!” and thanked her for my coffee.

Anyhow, I’ve shared this story with friends and family a few times as an amusing anecdote, and it is quite funny and humbling, but eventually I began to wonder if I had missed an opportunity.

You see, what a peculiar state of affairs we find ourselves in as the Church in the year of our Lord 2023. I highly doubt that I could have told you this story fifty or even twenty years ago because it likely would not have ever happened. It’s no secret that religious affiliation has declined in recent decades, particularly among young people, but the lesser known cousin of this statistic is that the vast majority – 77% – of these religiously disaffiliated young folks still report that they are actively spiritual and desirous of a relationship with God, they just pursue it on their own instead of part of a faith community.

There is no doubt that our one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church has at times failed, sometimes systemically, to sow the same grace as the crucified one who we follow, and that is certainly in part to blame for part of the current status quo of secularism being the norm. But there is no reason that these past shortcomings should cause us to throw in the towel and leave future generations of the spiritually hungry to fend for themselves without the benefit of thousands of years of accumulated prayers, liturgy, sacraments, music, theology, and wondering that we, as the Church, have received through the centuries like cherished family heirlooms kept for us by generations past.

I wonder to myself how differently my conversation with that young woman might have gone had I taken the time to ask her what she knew about the Church? To ask her if she had any spiritual practices of her own, or to ask her even what she knew about Jesus?

This is the moment when we can insert our preferred joke about Episcopalians being afraid of evangelism. And there is some humor in our spiritual shyness but there’s also some tragedy in it. Why are we – why was I – reluctant to engage this person seriously in a discussion about faith, which she had even initiated. I often wonder if part of our reticence to ask others about matters of faith has to do with our own uncertainty about how we might reply to that same set of questions, particularly that last one, which is the most fundamental question for Christians – who is Jesus?

You see, this was the question on the hearts and minds of the disciples Peter, James, and John as we find them in today’s Gospel lesson about an incredible event known as the Transfiguration. And you see, it’s so valuable to pay attention to the experiences of the disciples in the early days of the Church because our situation two thousand years later is increasingly similar to theirs in that Christianity is not taken for granted as the status quo and Jesus’ identity is not always universally understood, even among his followers.

Up until this point these disciples of Jesus were unsure of who Jesus was exactly, aside from Peter who took a good guess in an earlier passage. Their questions about Jesus sound familiar. Is Jesus simply a good teacher? One helpful spiritual guru alongside among many? Or perhaps he is another prophet, like the many before him, whose main objective was to speak truth to power? Or is he something else?

It’s undoubtedly true that Jesus is indeed both of those things, a good teacher of God’s law of love revealed in the Torah, and he was a prophetic voice proclaiming the ethics of love that constitute the Kingdom of God, but who Jesus is fundamentally, is also something far larger than those things.

You see, Jesus took these wondering disciples up to a mountaintop – a place where holy encounters are known to happen in scripture – and there he revealed himself as he truly is for the very first time. Luke writes that Jesus’s “face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” and suddenly two men, Moses and Elijah appeared beside him (Lk 9:29-30). And as they gazed in awe at this mystical, supernatural sight, a cloud from heaven enveloped them and the voice of God the Father rang out like thunder from on high, finally announcing for the disciples, and for us today who Jesus is. And the voice of God said “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!” (Lk 9:35).

Friends, I’ll tell you something downright scandalous, even in some corners of the Church. The Gospel is telling us that Jesus Christ is really, actually, and truly the Son of God. That is who Jesus is, first and finally. Jesus Christ is God’s only son who took human flesh and dwelt among us. More than a teacher like Moses and more than a prophet like Elijah, Jesus is the Son of God. That is the mystery that is revealed to us in the transfiguration. The idea that Jesus is actually the Son of God is so countercultural, scandalous, and still hard for us to grasp to this day for a number of reasons.

It’s hard for us for a number of reasons. Perhaps because we’ve heard it so often that it’s lost some of its significance. Perhaps it’s something we’ve heard but never fully understood. Perhaps it’s something some people have never actually heard to begin with. And perhaps it’s something that seems too incredulous to believe, and so it’s easier, less awkward, to explain Jesus as a nice spiritual figure and guide, rather than actually God incarnate.

This last reason, the incredulousness of Jesus as the Son of God, is the one that I suspect most of us rational and reasonable Episcopalians get hung up on. How could we actually believe such a thing in this day and age, let alone tell others that it is an idea worthy of their belief.

My answer is this, and I’ve said it before: faith in God, or the Son of God, is not about reason, because reason is not the only method of evaluating what is real. Faith is not science, faith is far more like art. You see, we don’t talk about the Van Gogh’s Starry Night in terms of whether or not it is true or false. We don’t ask ourselves whether an Emily Dickinson poem is logically provable. Those questions don’t make sense in the category of art, because art and faith are about conveying truth through beauty and mystery. Faith, like art, is about engaging in a mystery that our hearts sense to be real, and inviting others to be transformed by it along with us.

This is the paradox of Christian orthodoxy, such as believing that Jesus could actually, literally be the Son of God. You see, the idea of orthodoxy often gets a bad rap. It’s seen as something stodgy, restricting, and dogmatic, but I believe it’s actually the opposite, it can be something artistic that liberates us from the strictures of a worldview that is too narrow, calculated, and predictable. It’s something that allows us to take seriously the possibility of certain inexplicable mysteries of faith that have the power to transform individual lives and worldly systems simply by cracking the door open for God – or more accurately, seeing that God has cracked the door open for us.

These mysteries of faith, such as Christ’s real divinity, are mysteries that we also call paradoxes. And a paradox is nothing else than a truth that is the opposite of the truth that we expect.

And this truth that is the opposite of the truth we expect, the opposite of the dominant truth we hear in the world right now, is the most powerful and winsome thing we have. Belief in the inexplicable artistry of God sending his actual Son, is not an inconvenient barrier to attracting reasonable people to church; rather it is our biggest asset in attracting people who are hungry for artful mystery in a disenchanted world.

And the purpose of inviting others into this mysterious faith is of course to understand God’s own scandalous, countercultural love for us. Love so strong that He sent his only begotten Son to die for us, so that we might live. Love that comes to us so that we might become liberated from all the mundane things that alienate us from God’s love. Love that allows us too to be transfigured more and more into the image of that same loving, Son of God.

God loved us too deeply to let us walk through this world alone, and so he sent His son, his actual, living, breathing Son, to walk alongside us. It’s a preposterous mystery that I believe is really true. So may the love of his Son embolden us to walk, listen – and talk – alongside those whose restless hearts are searching eagerly for a transfiguration. Amen.